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originally posted in:Spread the Word
3/7/2014 7:11:22 PM
11

Autism helped hunter-gatherers to survive

[quote]Though people with autism face many challenges because of their condition, they may have been capable hunter-gatherers in prehistoric times, according to a paper published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology in May. The autism spectrum may represent not disease, but an ancient way of life for a minority of ancestral humans, said Jared Reser, a brain science researcher and doctoral candidate in the USC Psychology Department. Some of the genes that contribute to autism may have been selected and maintained because they created beneficial behaviors in a solitary environment, amounting to an autism advantage, Reser said. The "autism advantage," a relatively new perspective, contends that sometimes autism has compensating benefits, including increased abilities for spatial intelligence, concentration and memory. Although individuals with autism have trouble with social cognition, their other cognitive abilities are sometimes largely intact. The paper looks at how autism's strengths may have played a role in evolution. Individuals on the autism spectrum would have had the mental tools to be self-sufficient foragers in environments marked by diminished social contact, Reser said. The penchant for obsessive, repetitive activities would have been focused by hunger and thirst towards the learning and refinement of hunting and gathering skills. Today autistic children are fed by their parents so hunger does not guide their interests and activities. Because they can obtain food free of effort, their interests are redirected toward nonsocial activities, such as stacking blocks, flipping light switches or collecting bottle tops, Reser said.[/quote]

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  • Edited by Tom T: 3/12/2014 4:52:54 PM
    I am glad people are beginning to reframe learning disabilities so that they are seen as a processing differences with their own strengths, rather than just 'abnormal' and handicapped. I have recently been reading a book called 'The Dyslexic Advantage'. In one section it touches upon the brain organisation of dyslexics (and I presume, by extension, that of those with dyspraxia and ADD, who are thought to also have differences in the cerebellum) and contrasts it with those that have Autism. The book talks of how the brain organises neurons and links them together, with distributions falling across a bell curve. At one end of the curve is autism, with super condensed neural networks which are adept at super-detailed work. In dyslexia the very opposite is the case, with the neuron connections having far greater distancing between them. This is poor for detail work, but is very powerful at making novel/unusual connections.

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  • I saw this on cracked

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    • Edited by cxkxr: 3/7/2014 8:38:03 PM
      We used to have traits and characteristics. Now we call them disorders needed to be treated with mind-altering psychotropic drugs subjectively imposed by social enginners.

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      • Interesting

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      • I'm going to have to read more about this because this is the most interesting thing I've heard all week.

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        • Interesting

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        • Seems logical.

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        • I had assumed something similar. Nice to see that partially verified. I also thought that it might have an evolutionary advantage along with other distinct personality traits, which in the "modern" world might be detriments but to a hunter-gatherer primate might be great survival qualities. Like Narcissistic Personality disorder. All things in psychology stemming from biology, its a safe assumption there is a specific neuro-chemical cause to personality disorders like NPD. Perhaps some of them, like NPD were advantageous prior to agricultural civilization. Someone making the world all about themselves could potentially motivate people to go out and hunt/gather/survive. Especially other people with other disorders, like an autistic hunter-gatherer who can do the leg work, but then give it back to the community because there is some central figure directing all the movement. A similar niche, with that kind of feedback loop might also explain ASPD, manipulating others into doing their will, which might have benefited everyone if their will was "find food for us". The modern notion that all these disorders were always handicaps, static through all human history is clearly a flawed one. They're probably just modern results from formerly beneficial evolutionary strategies, which are no longer as beneficial as they once were.

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          • It's annoying that people say autistic as a synonym for retarded, or mentally handicapped in general. For the most part, if you are autistic, that doesn't make you slow. It has a lot to do with the way your brain is "wired", or how your synapses interact. It's rather perturbing.

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            • That's pretty interesting.

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            • Bump.

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